A cartoner normally contains a magazine for receiving a supply of flat folded carton blanks and apparatus for ejecting those carton blanks from the magazine and erecting them into a generally rectangular cross section tubular form. The cartoner has endless chains, one set carrying leading transport lugs and the other set carrying trailing transport lugs. The erected cartons are placed between the transport lugs and are held there for the cartoning operation. The cartoner also contains product buckets including leading and trailing elements which, together, create a support for the product to be loaded into the cartons. The product buckets move in alignment with the transport lugs so that the product may be thrust from the product buckets into the cartons carried by the transport lugs. A barrel loader is provided and carries reciprocating arms which thrust the product from the product buckets into the cartons. Movable elements are provided to manipulate the carton flaps to open and close them. A main drive is provided by the cartoner and all of the carton elements run in synchronism off the main drive.
Cartoners are usually employed in such a way as to require relatively frequent changeover to permit the running of different sizes of cartons and products. In the changeover process, mechanics use wrenches to unloosen parts. The mechanics shift the parts relative to some datum associated with the main drive and retighten the parts to fix them in that position. For example, the chains carrying the trailing lugs in the transport conveyor maintain a fixed relationship to the main drive. The chain carrying the leading lug is manually and physically shifted with respect to the chain carrying the trailing lugs so as to accommodate cartons of greater or lesser length (the length being the dimension in the machine direction). Similarly, the elements forming the product buckets are shifted with respect to each other. The elements which engage the flaps must be shifted to accommodate different flap positions. The foregoing are the cyclically rotational parts to which the present invention is particularly directed. Additionally, there are linearly-adjusted elements such as the magazine sides, the side rails through which the cartons pass and the like. These, too, are loosened, shifted and tightened to fix them in position.
A minimum of about two hours is required for the complete manual adjustment of parts involved in a changeover. The quality of that adjustment depends significantly on the care and quality of the mechanic performing the changeover operation. Once all of the adjustments have been made, a trail run is performed and usually considerable fine tuning of the adjustments is required, the amount of fine tuning being dependent upon the care with which the original adjustments were made. The complete changeover process may take as long as twenty-four hours.